All These Plans

As is typical of me, I had all these plans for January posts and then life happened. From September to this past Monday I have had posts scheduled out far in advanced. Sometimes not fully completed, but started and usually just missing a small element to finalize the post. The holidays it seems, has run me dry. I had planned on this but it’s hit me differently then I expected. See, the second I found out that we were permanent residents and could travel back to Canada, with less issues, a small panic began to build inside me. A panic that I wouldn’t be strong enough to maintain the careful boundaries I have created. Not strong enough to hold my resolve and allow others to walk all over me. It took some time for me to admit that this panic was not going to go away and I scheduled an appointment to see the therapist I saw ages ago to talk it out. However I scheduled it for after the holidays. I did that so that I test my strength and go to her to work out the emotions of what had happened after the fact and with a plan in place the panic dissipated.

That appointment was for today and on Sunday I cancelled it. This happened for a few reasons. One - the trip went so well. While we both came home with head-colds again (every time we travel it seems we come home sick), my strength and resolve were strong and boundaries were kept. People honored and respected them, and for that I am very grateful. Two - the thought of going to see that particular therapist was more stressful than anything I felt I needed to discuss.

I feel good about this decision to not seek out therapy, but I still feel a little unresolved. When I feel this way, insomnia tends to strike and lately my habit has been to run numbers when I can’t sleep. So here is the numbers I’ve run

Books

365 Project

Shot out of the house 157Shot in the house 208Self Portraits 49 Shots of my favorite person, Kevin 34The two of us 26

Other Photos

Of just Kevin 64Of the two of us 95Self portraits... 228My plants 124Yoga photos, also self portraits 265

Food

Groceries for the year $5,889.25Eating Out for the year $4,888.79Average monthly $898.17Vegas food cost $1,044.51Canada food cost $549.96. If not for these two trips, our eating out would have been down to $3,294.32, averaging $274.53 instead of $407.40 a month. Ouch.

I’ve got numbers for each month, total for the year, monthly average for almost everything; paycheck, food, electricity, gas, phone bill, amazon spending, events, massage, video games, and so much more.

The question though, is what is the purpose of these numbers? Sure they are interesting to me, but they serve no real purpose. At some point near the end of 2018, someone I follow posted an interesting question that hasn’t left my mind. Normally I would bookmark it and reflect on it later but as we were traveling it got lost in the blug of ignoring social media for the sake of visiting people I don’t get to see often. The gist of it was

“don’t feel discourage by all the success posts being written this time of year, success is measured differently by everyone and not every day or year is a successful one. If you are feeling down or overwhelmed by it all, that’s okay and know that you are worthy of love and respect whether things are good or bad”

A lot of the numbers I mention above are not successful numbers, at least in my mind. But when writing my wrap up post I just included the successes. I glossed over the failures. In fact I am still far too embarrassed to post anything about our debt situation, because while it is good (in the sense that the number is consistently lowering). It is definitely not where it should be, had we chosen to focus on it like we said we were going to. The thing is, this time of year people tend to reflect and make resolutions and by February have forgotten them. Or life has been hard and you feel already so broken down that reflection is just depressing and demotivating. I don’t want this to be the space that only shares the good success and doesn’t talk about the failures. The goals set at the beginning of 2018 were not always met and the numbers I share above reflect that to me, but they might not reflect that to you.

I guess the point of this post is that life isn’t always sunshine and rainbows and you can’t compare your story to someone else’s, especially when comparing on social media. If 2018 was a shitty year for you, I hope this one is better. And if not the year then at least the day. My success will look different from yours but we all deserve happiness. Next Wednesday I am sharing a few ups and downs I had that were outside of my goal setting.

What numbers do you crunch?

Angela Tolsma

I'm a lifestyle blogger, covering deep subjects including body images, battles with food, and overcoming how I was raised. I try to be as authentic as possible and I don’t sugar coat how I see things.